Author: Patrick

A friend told me once about his young son’s reac­tion to autumn. The boy was maybe two years old, and my friend took him out into the yard to watch the leaves fall from the trees. After a cou­ple moments spent look­ing around with con­ster­na­tion on his face, the son picked up a dou­ble hand­ful of leaves, held them up to his father, and said, “Fix it, Dad­dy!”

I feel the same, kid. I’m not ready for sum­mer to be done, but there were yel­low leaves on the deck this week­end and I had to use the space heater at the office today.

I know a lot of peo­ple who love fall, with its sweaters and the riot of colours in the trees, but to me it’s just the gate­way to yet anoth­er win­ter. I’m def­i­nite­ly a spring-and-sum­mer kind of guy.

I went out last night, since it was clear, and vis­it­ed my friend Tim, who’s camp­ing this week­end at Wasagam­ing. I snapped some star trails at his camp­site (my bat­tery, almost dead, man­aged 80 shots at 10 sec­onds each).

On the way home, I pulled off the high­way about ½ a mile down a grav­el road, and tried out a panoram­ic pho­to of the Milky Way. I set my cam­era up in por­trait mode and shot 5 pho­tos, 45 sec­onds each, tilt­ing the cam­era up after each shot. The cam­era start­ed out aimed at the hori­zon and the last shot was point­ed straight up at the zenith.

I stitched the pho­tos togeth­er using Hug­in, which did a very good job of auto­mat­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ing the pho­tos and find­ing the match­es. I did­n’t have to mas­sage any­thing man­u­al­ly.

So I went for a bike ride. I head­ed out to the coun­try­side south and west of town, and on one of the mile roads I paused to take some pho­tos in the “coun­try roads” style.

Coun­try road, just past the edge of town.

Where I stopped, though, there was a dead bird on the road, a big one. I think it may have been a hawk. While I was snap­ping pho­tos, two oth­er hawks land­ed on a cou­ple of near­by tele­phone poles and start­ed squawk­ing. One flew a cou­ple pass­es over me. I put my cam­era away and rode off about anoth­er ¼ mile down the road, where I stopped for a few more pho­tos. As I was snap­ping away, I heard/felt some­thing whoosh over my head, maybe three feet above me. I looked up and one of the hawks had fol­lowed me. I snapped a cou­ple quick pic­tures of him (one’s at the top of this post) and then took off again.

debat­ed chang­ing the title from Trans­la­tions to Reflec­tion, Trans­la­tion, Inva­sion (which is a not-com­plete­ly-inac­cu­rate sum­ma­ry of the sto­ry, at a very high lev­el);

turned on the air con­di­tion­ing, because it was get­ting pret­ty hot;

bor­rowed the neigh­bours’ kayak and pad­dled on the lake for a half-hour or so right at sun­set;

went and got some more pho­tos of the Milky Way and (serendip­i­tous­ly) the Auro­ra Bore­alis.

“Can I help you with some­thing?” Head­less man­nequins wore flim­sy cot­ton dress­es in earth tones. Coun­ter­top racks dis­played neack­laces and bracelets made of beads, pearls, or smooth and pol­ished stones. A sign at the back said RESTROOMSFORPAYINGCUSTOMERSONLY.

“I need a wash­room,” I said.

She motioned at the sign.

“No, I need a wash­room.”

She sighed, though I couldn’t tell whether she was exas­per­at­ed with me or with the sit­u­a­tion I was evi­dent­ly try­ing to put her in. “Pol­i­cy,” she said. Then, giv­ing me a good look­ing-over, she said, much more qui­et­ly, “You okay?”